Analysis Of Annie Dillard 's ' Living Like Weasels '

Everyone has a favorite animal. Some admire lions and tigers because they exude dominance and power. Others prefer dogs and cats because they make great companions. Although there are thousands of animals to extol, most would not even think about weasels. These creatures are small, overlooked, and have a negative connotation. Calling someone a weasel is an insult: it means they are untrustworthy. However, in the essay, “Living Like Weasels,” Annie Dillard writes about how an encounter with a weasel changed her life. Dillard uses parallelism and unique rhetorical strategies to show how people should find inspiration to live life in a more fulfilling manner.

The tone in the excerpt of “Live Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard is one that is reflective and optimistic. In this, she tells us what she’s learned from her experience of the an encounter with the a weasel. This is proven in the first paragraph of the excerpt, “I can learn from a wild animal...something of mindlessness, something from the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive.” It Dillard shows us complete her reflection on what we, as people, can gain from learning about the habits of animals, and that she’s clearly thought about it. This is even more so further evident in paragraph two when she questions reasons with herself, “Could two live under the wild rose...as received and unchallenged

The hummingbird was an example of a person with the idea that living fast was smart. The whale was an example of a person that lived much slower and eventually left to feel more secluded and away. The human with a wall around their heart was an example of a person who lived very emotionally and on edge with the fear of heartbreak. All in all, the details of a person’s life is examined differently whether the person chooses to live the type of life where they look at the details or

In Annie Dillard’s short story “Living Like Weasels,” the reader follows her narration of her first encounter with a weasel. The setting takes place at Hollins Pond, a patch of woods residing near a housing development in Virginia, where she sits on a log and observes the scenery. Some time passes and she eventually watches a weasel scurry into her line of sight; their eyes lock, and her entire perspective on life is altered. After the fact, she describes the confrontation through her analysis between a weasel living in the wild versus people living in civilization. She brings several good points into light that cause herself to question her entire approach on the way she should live. I for one find Dillard's train-of-thought very relatable in analysis of my own life.

In “Living like Weasels” Dillard tells a tale of an eagle who “[gutted a] living weasel with his talons [and bended] his beak [to clean] the beautiful airborne bones” (66). The cruel but alluring diction is done to illustrate Dillard’s fascination with the weasel’s willingness to cease from existence because of their commitment to its choices and lifestyle. The weasel does not accept its gruesome fate to be a meal to the eagle without attempting to turn the tables. It is completely unsurprising to hear how “only 6 percent of the population follows the routes they desire” (Haltiwanger, 1). Most of humanity crumbles under obstacles and instead attempts to embark on easier tasks. Dillard herself is guilty of such an act and she reveals her mistake when she says “I missed my chance”. (69) The tone throughout her personal note sends out feelings of regret which enforces a connection

The fifthteenth paragraph takes the reader from personal reflection to reconsideration, to general conclusion. Before the show, Dillard “thought she know my [her] way around beauty…” but then reconsiders that on that day at the airport, she had only “begun learning about beauty.” By the end, she concludes that there is “nothing...more gladdening that knowing we must...move back the boundaries of the humanly possible…” She includes these transforming detail in order to inform her audience of the journey of learning that she traveled upon. This also works to strengthen her ethos, because to her audience, she becomes a well-rounded person that is willing to accept change for the better.

In the creative non-fiction essay, “Living Like Weasels,” Annie Dillard establishes an interesting comparison between the nature of a weasel, a small, carnivorous mammal in relation to the nature of human beings. After Dillard’s naturalistic encounter, she realizes differences in behavior between species regarding human’s habit of living by choice and weasel’s nature of living by necessity. Dillard writes with such description while explaining the “wild” life of a weasel. She creates vivid imagery throughout her essay, through her excessive explanation of wildlife and landscaped scenery. Dillard takes such a stylistic approach to portray the freedom of nature and its entirety.

In Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels” she describes her encounter with a wild weasel. Dillard conveys the idea that humans live so much by choice it is becoming a burden, and that we need to live more through necessity. By focusing on purpose you will prosper more in life. Dillard stresses the idea that humans should live more like weasels by comparing man vs. nature and a weasel’s natural instinct.

In “Living Like Weasels” Annie Dillard describes her experience with a weasel reflecting about the instinct the weasel lives by compared to the monotonous existence people live today. Dillard then narrates the setting, just a few minutes outside of civilization, where she explains the weasel’s life describing its primal and thoughtlessness lifestyle. The weasel Dillard sees in the wild is primitive, showing its instinct and calling in life contrasting the reason and rationality people live by today. In the passage, Dillard concludes by contrasting the wildness and instinct of the weasel to the logic of society. By doing so, she accentuates the ancient instinct of living and elaborates on how learning from the weasel’s life might make one possess the same desire to live.

Throughout the piece we witness Dillard continually posing questions, however they are asked with the purpose of intent. As living creatures we all have some curiosity of other living things. The question she asks in her writing are rhetorical because she is purposefully using it as a convincing tactic. Moreover, by including“Living like Weasels,” by Dillard within your anthology writers will have a more creative way to justify their needs and also compel the readers to be further engaged and share her experience.

Annie Dillard decided to name her essay Living Like Weasels in order to express her respect of the weasels’ way of life and how someday she hopes to emulate it. Annie first expresses her respect for the weasel when she recalls the story of the eagle and the weasel’s skull, this example showed how obedient a weasel is and how it sticks to its instincts. Next Annie shows her desire to live like a weasel when she compliments them repeatedly on their simple way of life. And lastly and perhaps the most striking way Annie shows us that she wants to live like a weasel is when she actually imagines her self grabbing a weasel and being brought down underground to live with them. While the tile of the essay might first be quite shocking, after reading

Living Like Weasel." ) Dillard is saying that we should live the life we're meant to. Another quote is “I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should”. (Dillard, Annie. "

Dillard uses many unusual language choices to create more meaning in the story both in physical and figurative parts of the essay. While Dillard is in her bathroom calling attention to the spider’s web, she uses both inversion and repetition, “Her six-inch mess of web works, works somehow, works miraculously, to keep her alive and me amazed” (2). This sentence uses “works” repetitively in succession, this seems to reaffirm that the web is the device that captures the dead bugs and shows her awe towards the spider’s mechanism. This sentence also uses inversion with the phrase “me amazed,” the words have been switched from the syntactically correct “amazed me.” Dillard also uses repetition not isolated in a single sentence to create meaning and emphasize the

As a child, the living conditions in which one is raised dictates their perception of normal. Constantly moving from town to town was a thrilling experience in which Jeannette Walls thrived, even with all the struggles that accompanied that lifestyle. With age comes the awareness of one’s surroundings, in which Walls discovered the way of life she considered normal was in fact very abnormal. However, when she began to experience a “normal” life, she discovered that though it was supposed to make her feel secure, she was not as happy. The circumstances of her childhood provided a sense of joy, that the stability of what others considered a normal happy existence could not provide to her.

The ideals held by Ralph Waldo Emerson still hold true and very insightful to the state of affairs in our current society. We are driven by social media interaction and staying indoors rather than experiencing outdoor world by ourselves. Rarely does anyone truly have a self-introspecting moment in the great outdoors, nor do most people have the time to take such an adventure. Our society drives us to get things expediently and not to savor the sweetest moments of life. However, life’s nectar is most succulently enjoyed when one takes a moment and takes in what is around him. One must put down the phone, the controller, the remote and as the cliche saying goes, “stop and smell the roses”. It is the little moments in life through nature that